Many Realtors® have heard the tale of the real estate agent who made it and continues to sell homes every month because they are a “farmer”. Now most of us aren’t real farmers. If you aren’t planting crops to take to market you aren’t a real farmer. In this first part of “How to create a digital farm” we are going to exam the flaws in the current training and methodology of farming as most real estate professionals have been trained. Over the next several weeks we will then cover how you can create your own digital farm. We will show you how you can create a “buyer farm” and a “seller farm”. In fact you will see that these are two very different “crops” that you can take advantage of and make sure that you grow carefully. If done correctly you will have as many real estate leads for both buyers and sellers that you will never have to worry about another crop ever again.

Let’s think about the current “real estate farm” theory for a moment. The idea is you send enough postcards, flyers, or direct mail pieces to a certain area and eventually people will remember you and call you when they need help with real estate. There are a few problems with this strategy:

1. The cost – direct mail is expensive and postcards are not that much cheaper. Flyers are more cost effective but it can be difficult to find a company or person to distribute them and doing them yourself takes you away from doing other marketing.
2. The time – It can be weeks, months, and some say years before you reap the full rewards of your farm. You need results today!
3. Picking an area – this can literally be the make or break part of picking a farm. There are several items to consider: how many homes or condos in the farm, what is the turnover ratio, are there a dominate player in the area that I have to be concerned about? Make a mistake in judging your area and you may spend ALL of your hard earned money and get zero results.
4. What to send them – If you manage to pick the right area and can get the cost low enough you still have to make sure to send the right items out to them every month and make sure it gets to the printer in time so that you can get it distributed.
5. Lack of tracking – You can’t be sure who is reading your material and who is just throwing it away. Everyone could be reading your material or no one could be reading your material you just can’t be sure.
6. Limited to a small geographic area – let’s face it you will only be able to farm an area that is limited in size in scope for cost reasons and to make sure that you demonstrate your expertise to that area.

So what if you could create a farm that was able to make you a dominate player in your area in months and not years? What if you could create this farm without having to outlay thousands of dollars in printed materials? What if also you could create a farm that was working for you 24 hours a day 365 days a year? If you knew who was reading your material and you had their information without having to have a company get it to you would that be valuable? How about having people call you instead of you calling on them? The answers to these questions lie in creating a digital farm. Over the next two weeks we will be posting on how to create your very own digital farm and how you can use it to be the dominate agent in your area. We are going to investigate how you can create your own “buyer farm” and your own “seller farm” and how the Realtor® of tomorrow needs both these farms in order to survive today and thrive tomorrow.

Future Posts in the series
• How to Create a Buyer Farm
• How to to Create a Digital Farm
• How to Harvest Your Buyer Crop
• How to Create a Seller Farm
• How to Make sure your Seller Crop Gets Harvested by You